Month: December 2015

After uninstalling Microsoft Essentials, Windows Defender automatically takes over quietly in the background. If you want to install another antivirus protection program, you must turn off Windows Defender.

Here is how.

In the search box, type, Windows Defender.

Click Windows Defender. After it is launched, click Tools and then click options.

Click Administrator and uncheck the box that states, “Use this program”, and then click Save.

To verify that Windows Defender is now turned off, repeat step 1 and launch Windows Defender. You should not get this message:

In Windows 10 you can turn off Windows Defender real-time protection, but it will only be temporary. Windows will automatically turn real-time protection back on if it’s off for a while.

You can turn Windows Defender off with three simple steps (Did someone say OSO?)

Step 1 - Group Policy 1) Type edit group policy in the 'Search the web and Windows' textbox on the left side of the taskbar. 2) Click edit group policy from the search results. 3) Within Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Windows Defender, Change 'Turn off Windows Defender' from 'Not Configured' or 'Disabled' to 'Enabled'.

Step 2 - Disable Windows Defender in the registry 1) Type regedit in the 'Search the web and Windows' textbox on the left side of the taskbar. 2) Click regedit (Run Command) from the search results. 3) Within Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender, Change 'DisabledAntiSpyware' from '0' to '1'.

Step 3 - Disable Windows Defender Service in the registry 1) Reboot your computer into Safe Mode. 2) Type regedit in the 'Search the web and Windows' textbox on the left side of the taskbar. 3) Click regedit (Run Command) from the search results. 4)Within Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WinDefend, Change 'Start' from '2 - Automatic' to '4 - Disabled' or '3 - Manual'.

You can turn Windows Defender on with three simple steps by repeating the steps above.

Ever since upgrading to Windows 10, sometimes ,when I open the Task Scheduler, I get error dialogs stating that certain tasks are missing. Why? I don’t know. But to clean it up, you can just delete them from the registry at:

I at one time installed Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition. I then uninstalled it, but the uninstall went badly somehow.

Weeks or months later, I saw the software lingering in the Programs and Features area where you can modify or uninstall programs.

So, I tried to uninstall it again and could not because the package was missing from the Package Cache folder.

Now, I don’t claim to understand how all this works and why it just hung when I tried to both uninstall and repair it. All I know is that sometimes I would get a dialog box during the uninstall prompting me to browse for the package that apparently was missing.

I did a lot of research and tried a lot of different things. Nothing worked for me. Without that package, I felt doomed…. until I came across this article.

One possible cause of USB Mass Storage Device problems: Windows can get “confused” by all the old (and sometimes conflicting) USB storage driver data that tends to collect and remain installed on a PC

Here’s why: By default, Device Manager only displays drivers of connected devices so the drivers you see in Device Manager aren’t the only USB storage drivers that are really there! You probably still have drivers installed for devices you once connected then disconnected long ago!

Windows installs drivers for a USB Mass Storage device when you first plug it in to a port

Windows sometimes installs the same driver for the same deviceeach time you connect it to a different port!

Problem is
==> These drivers aren’t uninstalled when you simply unplug the device but only when you uninstall the device (or each device instance per port)
==> Driver data associates devices with drive letters and ports. Port and drive letter conflicts may occur as you start unplugging/replugging devices

You may be surprised at just how many old USB drivers are actually still installed on your machine!

Download drivecleanup.zip, unzip and save to your desktop. Move the 32 or 64 bit version of DriveCleanup.exe to C:\Windows\System32

Open an elevated command prompt window:

NOTE! It must be an elevated command prompt window or the tool won’t work. (If you need instruction, click on the embedded hyperlink in the bullet below.) p.s. Thanks to andrew129260 in helping to highlight this important point!

In the command prompt enter: drivecleanup.exe
==> Your output should be similar to my example below.
==> If, instead, you get an error message like Command not recognized it means you didn’t move Drivecleanup.exe to the right directory

1) On the body of the report, drag a tablix. Make the first row the height and width of your page. Call the Tablix ‘TheTablix’.

2) Drag a rectangle into the first row of the tablix. Call the Tablix ‘TheRectangleRow1’.

3) Left mouse click the rectangle. Click the top left square. Drag the top corner toward the bottom right corner about 3 inches.

4) Left mouse click the body. Right mouse click the body and insert image. Choose Embedded and click import. Click OK. Set the location of the image to 0,0. Change the Sizing to ‘FitProportional’. Call the image, ‘TheImage;.

5) Right mouse click the image, choose layout, and the send backwards.

6) Left mouse click the rectangle. Click the top left square. Drag the top corner back to the top left corner of the body. Copy the size of ‘TheRectangleRow1’

7) In the Properties window, select your image so it is selected. Paste the size of the rectangle size you copied to the clipboard into the size property of the image.

8) If everything was done correctly, when you click within the borders of the page, the image should be selected in the properties window. From here, you can select a control from the toolbox and draw it over the image. The end result, is the control actually becomes a child of the body and that is what you want.

The zOrder shoudld be as follows:

1) The parent of the controls is ‘TheRectangleRow1’.
2) The parent of ‘TheRectangleRow1’ is ‘TheTablix’
3) The parent of ‘TheImage’ is ‘TheRectangleRow1’ but 1 z-order behind the controls.
4) The parent of ‘TheTablix’ is the BODY.